


This Concludes Our Broadcast Day

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Inside No. 9 (TV)
Genre: Continuation, Gen, Hauntings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 02:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4001923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens after the end of "Seance Time"</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Concludes Our Broadcast Day

The lights went out.

Gemma screamed a little, clapping her hands in front of her mouth. It suddenly seemed very important not to make noise, but she couldn't articulate why.

“Terry?” she whispered.

The silhouette was still barely visible before her, but she couldn't see it as Terry any more.

“Excuse me,” the PC beside her said, “are you—”

“Shh!” she said urgently.

He narrowed his eyes at her. It was insane. She couldn't explain it, couldn't put her finger on what terrified her.

“ _Mummy?”_ came a whisper in the dark. It was too high to be Terry.

The door creaked.

“'ere, is that the police?” Pete sounded unusually subdued. “I just wanted to say I didn't mean any of it—”

“ _Shhhhh!”_ Gemma hissed again. There was something moving in the dark, something just beside Terry.

Pete's voice went from relief to irritation. “Good god, he's not dead? The hell do you fink you're on about? I'll see you bastards in court. And you—” Pete strode forward to lay a hand on the figure.

“No, that's not—” Clive. Fuck it all, his name was Clive. And now that she remembered she couldn't make her tongue work.

The figure rotated. It was too dark to see from where they were. Pete's hand fell away. Then he went backwards.

Gemma gave a little scream. The officer darted forward.

“Sir? Sir, I'll have to ask you to—god, he's not breathing.”

The lights flared once, too bright, and then fizzed out completely.

 

Spencer hit rewind. The screen fuzzed, it made no difference whether the recording went forward or backward, the result was the same.

“No usable footage,” he said. He looked down at her, over his narrow glasses.

Gemma didn't know what to do with her hands. She sat in the single most uncomfortable chair she'd ever known and withered under his scrutiny.

“Two people dead. Our st– _main_ actor, comatose.” Spencer set the remote down. “This is worse than the series of _Dancing With The Stars_ when Heather Mills' leg caught on fire. Complete wash.”

“I'm sorry,” Gemma said, unable to look at him.

“Sorry? For the best viral advert the world will never see?”Spence leaned forward, skewering the desktop with his fingers. “On top of all that, the dwarf's family is suing us.”

“He wasn't—”

Spence waved her away. He got up, arms crossed behind his back, and paced the room while looking out his bay window. Gemma knew exactly what was coming.

“Miss...”

“Baker, sir.”

“Miss Baker. You've had a relatively clean record with us. And it's in light of your previous work that I am not just hanging you out to dry with the rest of the dirty laundry.”

“Meaning, sir?”

“Meaning I will call you when I call you. Go home, Gemma.”

 

As if that fixed anything. She wasn't fired. God. She couldn't even worry about that now.

Her flat was damp and clammy. The lights wouldn't stop flickering. When she tried to lose herself in television, all she ever got were awful news reports of drowning and other disjointed images. 

She tried calling Amanda. Her blithe apathy would be more than welcome now, but it rang until it went to her machine.

It was a week before she could force herself to go see Terry.

He lay on his back attached to every medical machine she could identify. A thin beard crawled unkempt over his cheeks and chin. His watery gaze was fixed on the ceiling. She squeezed his hand, which was limp.

“He's unresponsive,” the nurse noted. “You family?”

“No, I'm a...friend.”

The nurse snorted. “he could use a few. The only kin we've got listed is an ex.”

“Yes,” Gemma said, forcing herself to smile, “he always used to joke about how a finished series was another month of alimony to her...well, I say _joke,_ but...” she swallowed.

The nurse checked the vital signs, making vague noises of confirmation. He would've gotten along with Amanda.

“Well, everything's working just fine. He's just not _there_ , you see. Do you have any idea how this could've happened?”

Gemma looked at Terry. His expression was the same one he'd had just before the lights went out.

“Dunno,” she said softly.

 

She made calls. The first was to the producer of  _Hedda Gabler._

“—never seen anything like it. She just started reciting nursery rhymes, pissed herself, then fell into the orchestra pit!” the irritated little man took a breath. “Worse than that McBeth run where the lead actor got drunk just before performance and—”

“Yes, yes,” Gemma said hastily, “but is Anne all right?”

“She's not dead, but her career is,” the producer snapped, and then hung up.

The second call was to the production of some Frankenstein ripoff, a job Amanda had been working simultaneously with ScaredyCam. Gemma found out why Amanda hadn't answered the phone.

“Drank her spirit gum,” the replacement makeup artist whispered in conspiratorial tones. “We thought she was storin' booze in 'em, you know, like Lon Chaney jr. only, she dropped the bottle and grabbed her throat, looked like she hadn't realized what she was doin'. Third bottle, she bloody well must have.”

Gemma was suddenly numb. “Is she all right?”

“Don't know, love. Haven't heard from anyone yet. It might be a while, though. As they were getting her into the ambulance, one of the paramedics slipped and dropped her. He swore he stepped in a big puddle of water, but there wasn't one to be found!”

 

The lights wouldn't stay on now, so Gemma bought a bunch of candles. She brought out the store of winter blankets to guard against the sudden drafts that now plagued her flat. 

It was a stupid idea, stupid, stupid. Just some cardboard and plastic, what possible help could it be? But still, Gemma brought out the ouji board her parents had bought when she was twelve. The box didn't stay together properly, it was more sellotape than cardboard at this point. There was a deep crease in the middle of the board. Did that affect anything? She caught herself wondering if there was a hotline she could call to ask and laughed at herself. It sounded small in the dark space.

So she spread it out, with the little sun and moon in the corners and a circle of candles around it. A perfect set for a grade-school sleepover. She should've made popcorn, but instead she wrapped up in her granny-square quilt and put both index fingers on the planchette.

“Terry?” she said. “Terry, can you hear me?”

She tried not to squeak when the heart-shaped piece of wood moved. It was just ideomotor effect. she was a fool.

It went to the C, then the O, then the L, and finally the D.

Goosebumps broke out on her forearm. 

“What's happened? Why aren't you in your body?” she didn't know why she was whispering.

I D O N T K N O

She sighed. If  _he_ didn't know then...this was insane, this was all pants-on-head crazy. She was having a nervous breakdown, and would probably be joining Terry in the ward soon enough.

The planchette was moving again. She hadn't asked anything.

M U M M Y, it wrote.

She was suddenly cold. It wasn't her body, the air all around her had suddenly dropped twenty degrees.

“Where...” she began in a wavering voice, “where are you?”

I M O N S C A R E D Y C A M

The planchette flipped out from beneath her fingers. She shrieked and fell back, scrabbling away from the table. Of course the candles started flickering, why the hell hadn't she invested in a lantern? She propelled herself with one leg as a puddle of water formed on the ouji board.

 

She knew what she had to do, of course. In a way, she'd known it since that first day.

She had to buy the webcam because her laptop was an older model, didn't come with one. She had a hell of a time setting it up. Then she had to join a video chat, and picking the right one was far from easy. She settled on one where the participants seemed to type only in expletives. Of course that wasn't necessarily any indication of whether they were bad people, so it did little to ease her conscience. But when she booted up the camera, they flooded the chatlog with requests for tits.

Gemma took a nerving breath.

“ _Hi,”_ she said, “hi, I'm G-Gemma. I'm Gemma and I'm on...ScaredyCam.”

The screen immediately warped, sending out a dissonant tone that jangled her nerves. She jolted back.

The screen returned to normal. The chatters were filling up the screen with type, most along the lines of U WOT BITCH?

One, however, was different. It typed: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? WHAT IS THIS. Then a jumble of random letters and finally a never ending stream of F's, as if something had fallen on the key.

Gemma shrieked and slammed the laptop shut.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she cried. 

She wasn't sure who she was apologizing to.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, can I say I love this episode? There is literally nothing I would change about it, but I was really curious about what would go on after the ending so...here you go. The MacBeth actor is a nod to the first series(I think he also fell into the orchestra pit? It's been a while.) the Lon Chaney reference is sadly true. He did a television adaptation of Frankenstein as the monster and he was so ploughed he thought it was the read-through and only mimed throwing props.   
> (also, shout-out to the commentary. These guys are geniuses.)


End file.
